2/08/2006

A. Kenya suffers a two year drought, and enters a nasty famine.B. New Zealand dog food manufactuer offers to send 42 tons of dried food.C. New Zealand company called racist, etc.

Frankly, I don't get it. If Ms. Drummond wants to ship the stuff all the way to Kenya, and the orphans refuse to eat it, so be it. Otherwise, what business of the Kenyan government is it to interfer with the private shipment of food INTO the country?

If I were Ms. Drummond, I think I'd be inclined to very publically eat a meal of the stuff, and ship the rest of it. I've personally FedEx'd packages to kenya, and their border inspections aren't exactly the strongest in the world, so illicitly importing food shouldn't be that hard.

-As a side note, many dog food manufaturing companies also make human foods, for example, Nestle makes Alpo dog food and Infant formula.

Some years ago I performed a survey of the items in my house to see what could be used in non-traditional ways during emergency survival situations. Dog food was part of it.

I read the labels and discovered that there's no reason why a human couldn't eat it and survive comfortably enough. In fact, most dog food is somewhat more healthy than the stuff we regularly buy at the store. Less fat and calories.

Since I would be remiss to suggest that someone could survive on this stuff without some direct experience, I sampled some.

Dry dog food is rather innocuous as long as it's chicken or beef flavored. I found liver flavor to be vile, mainly because of a bad aftertaste that took a long time to fade. But all dry dog food is rather bland to our human palates.

Canned food is remarkably like Dinty Moore stew, except that the meat chunks have been boiled to the point that they're mushy. There is also some grit in the meat. (Bone flecks, I think. Good source of calcium, and it's how Inuit people get calcium in their diet.)

I don't own cats, so I can't attest to the flavor of cat food.

People seem to be conditioned to react with disgust to pet food, but it's all processed and cooked just like human fare. There literally is little difference between the two so far as nutrition is concerned, and it's just as disease free as the stuff you ate for dinner last night. I even suggest that people buy dry pet food in bulk and feed off of it during a disaster.

And no, I don't eat it regularly. This is because I find it to be dull and mostly tasteless, and I earn enough cash to buy more appealing chow.

So far as the NZ woman, she wasn't offering pet food. Instead she had developed an all-natural, high energy dried food supplement similar to granola. It was that stuff she was offering. Some of the readers on my own blog suggested that the Kenya government turned her down because they couldn't sell such non-traditional food and use the proceeds to line their own pockets.

Excellent analysis Mr. Rummel. Personally, I will keep canned food around in case of an emergency, but when that runs out, I will remeber your dog food advice. Have you tried pouring milk over it, like cereal? is there a dog food that comes with little pink stale marshmallows?